The Republican People’s Party (CHP) continues to adopt the slogan “Rights, law, justice” as a guiding principle in public rallies, yet hostility toward workers in some municipalities under its administration appears to know no limits. It has emerged that Turan Çil, a Beşiktaş Municipality worker who was unlawfully dismissed after objecting to months of underpaid wages and seeking his rights, was also reported to the police by Beşiktaş Deputy Mayor Ömer Rasim Şişman. Çil learned that he had been reported on Tuesday, 24 March, while continuing his protest in front of Beşiktaş Municipality, where he has been resisting for 99 days together with his wife. He later went to the Feriköy police station to give his statement and spoke to ANF.
Six years of labor ended with a single message
Turan Çil, a 48-year-old father of two, said he was dismissed from his job at Beşiktaş Municipality, where he had worked for six years in the document registration unit under the Directorate of Administrative Affairs, through a Social Security Institution (SGK) message sent to his phone one evening without any prior notice or inquiry. Çil stated that although his dismissal was recorded under Code 15 in the Social Security Institution, indicating mass layoffs due to economic reasons, he was in fact singled out as a scapegoat for seeking his rights alongside other workers. He noted that wages had been paid incompletely since July 2025 and described the situation as follows: For a long time, salaries were being paid irregularly. It reached a point where we could not use our credit cards, pay our rent, or even give our children pocket money to school. Although our monthly salary is between 65,000 and 70,000 Turkish lira, we were being given amounts like 10,000 to 15,000 Turkish liras once a week or every two weeks, as if it were pocket money. Because the municipality administration constantly brushed aside the grievances we experienced, my colleagues and I went to the General Labour Union Branch No. 1, affiliated with the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK), of which we are members, and explained the situation. However, just one week after we reported our problems to the union, on 28 November 2025, I learned that I had been dismissed through a message from the Social Security Institution. The message arrived in the evening while I was having dinner at home with my wife and children, and we were shocked. Because in six years of working life, I had never received any disciplinary penalty or record; I simply went to the union and asked when our wages would be paid.”
They said I was reinstated, then tried to kill two birds with one stone
Çil stated that seven other workers were dismissed along with him at the time and said he began his protest after the municipal administration kept stalling him by repeatedly saying, “Wait, wait.” He said that on the ninth day of his protest, he was called in by the municipality and described what happened: “In a meeting attended by the municipality’s Chief of Staff Fatih Mangal and Deputy Mayor Samet Taş, I was told that I had been reinstated, that I should take down the banners below, and that I should return to work the next day. With that joy, I called my 16-year-old daughter, who had been deeply upset about my situation, and shared the good news. When I arrived at the municipality the next day, I was welcomed with great happiness by my colleagues. Just as I thought everything had been resolved, I realized that my Social Security Institution registration had still not been completed. After waiting for 13 days, when I met again with Chief of Staff Fatih Mangal, they this time effectively tried to blackmail me by asking my wife, who had been dismissed ten months earlier from her position in the municipality’s social services department under Code 15 on the pretext of an economic crisis, to withdraw her court case. My wife does not have a request for reinstatement; she is only pursuing her legal case to claim her rights. Later, when my calls were no longer answered, my wife contacted Deputy Mayor Samet Taş. When he told her, ‘We are waiting for your documents,’ we were completely shocked. Because the issue was my reinstatement, not hers. When my wife clearly stated that she had no demand for reinstatement, Taş told her, ‘By not withdrawing your case, you are not thinking about the institution, but about your own interests.’ In this way, they tried to kill two birds with one stone, both by dismissing me and by pressuring my wife to abandon her case for her compensation rights.”
I was set up through union-municipality collaboration
Çil stated that after the municipality failed to keep its promise, he resumed his protest in front of the municipality from where he had left off and emphasized that although all the other dismissed workers were reinstated, he was singled out as a scapegoat. He pointed to the union’s major role in this and said that Deputy Mayor Ömer Rasim Şişman openly admitted it. Çil said: “On the 40th day of my protest, Deputy Mayor Ömer Rasim Şişman called me and said, ‘You forced the union toward a strike, you encouraged a strike.’ When I tried to contact the union and asked to speak with union chairman Mehmet Pehlivan, they did not answer my calls. Despite our wages being paid irregularly, our union dues are automatically deducted. Instead of standing by me during this process, they resorted to false claims. One of the deputy chairpersons I spoke to from the union alleged that I had insulted the chairman. In my view, it was all a setup. Even though our wages were irregular, our union dues continued to be deducted automatically. I was set up through cooperation between the union and the municipality. Because I had previously run for union representative and the workers trusted me, they eliminated me in this way.”
We ended up at the police station for demanding my job back
Çil stated that even his demand, “I want my job back,” directed at Beşiktaş Deputy Mayor Ömer Rasim Şişman was being treated as a crime, and said that Şişman had filed a criminal complaint against him. Çil said he saw Şişman at a CHP rally and that Şişman gave him an appointment for 16 January but later stopped answering his calls. He continued: “Later, I tried to speak to him at an event organized by the Social Democracy Foundation (SODEV), of which he is also the chair, for university students, but I was forcibly removed from the event by private security. When the students protested this, Şişman went as far as accusing me of being a ‘ghost employee’.” Çil pointed out that Şişman, who failed to honor the appointment he had given and conducted a smear campaign against him, most recently filed a complaint with the police. He said: “On Tuesday, 24 March, while I was in the protest area with my wife, I was called by the Feriköy Police Department and summoned to give a statement. When I went to the station, I learned that Beşiktaş Deputy Mayor Ömer Rasim Şişman had filed a complaint against me. When I asked the police officer there about the reason, he said that Şişman was disturbed by me appearing in front of him wherever he went. It seems that my demand to get my job back disturbed him.”
Çil underlined that he would continue his protest until he is reinstated to the job that was unlawfully taken from him and said: “Those who accuse us of theft of labor and being ‘ghost employees’ do not even provide staff with a glass of drinking water. Saying they do not have money to buy water, they force employees to purchase it themselves from the market.”
I do not forgive them!
Yeşim Çil, Turan Çil’s strongest supporter, who was herself dismissed by Beşiktaş Municipality under the pretext of an “economic crisis,” said she does not forgive those who subjected them to this injustice. She stated that she too was dismissed under Code 15 on 9 April 2024 and said, “They victimized both me and my husband.” Çil reacted strongly to the municipality’s attempt to use her as a tool of blackmail, even though she has no demand to be reinstated. She said that her court case is continuing only for her compensation rights, but that her support for her husband’s resistance has also disturbed the municipal administration. Çil said that because of this unlawful treatment by the municipality, her daughter has also been devastated. She said: “They destroyed the mental well-being of my lively 16-year-old daughter. They left her unable to prepare for university. Her mind is constantly on us, and she cries all the time. While we were resisting here in the cold, Beşiktaş district chair Mehmet Arslan could walk past us saying only, ‘Hope it goes well.’ Mehmet Arslan, who placed his own son in a job at this municipality. What kind of shamelessness is this? I say this ironically, but apparently his own son is more victimized than Turan Çil. They have openly turned the municipality into a family company. They dismiss workers under the excuse of an ‘economic crisis’ then hire their own relatives and children. We cannot even give our own child pocket money to school. Do they have any conscience at all? If there is an economic crisis, where does this flashy luxury lifestyle come from? Why are there private vehicles? Is this not social municipalism? Is this not what you claim to defend? Do you not chant justice at rallies every Wednesday? Do you not say that children should not go to bed hungry? Yet we have been living through injustice for 101 days. You are condemning my children to hunger. Özgür Özel, you say, ‘If anyone is exploiting the rights of workers and laborers, let them find me.’ Where have you been for 101 days, Özgür Özel? Even the deaf sultan has heard about this, so why are you playing the three monkeys?”
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